Several bills that would have established new statewide rules for landfill sites were set aside by a state Senate committee this week. The Energy and Natural Resources Committee voted to refer five landfill-related bills to interim study, meaning they will not be brought before the full Senate for a vote this session.
The bills sought to: require state regulators to consider health and the environment when making future rules; limit waste from outside the state; require landfill applicants to report on potential harms and benefits of a project; direct regulators to prioritize expansions instead of new landfills; and establish a version of a solid waste site evaluation committee.
During a hearing, Loudon Republican Sen. Howard Pearl told the committee that he’d been working with Gov. Kelly Ayotte’s team on a different bill that would aim to address the same issues as those bills, also through the creation of a site evaluation committee.
The bill would establish a new 7-member committee that would evaluate the sustainability of any major solid waste facility site proposal.
“I feel we're making good progress. I think we're getting very close to having some final language, but I would rather see that all confined to one bill and going in one direction, rather than trying to have multiple bills that are trying to address the same challenges,” he told the committee.
New Hampshire lawmakers have struggled to move forward on legislation related to landfills for years, as project proposals from companies like Casella Waste Systems continue to cause anxiety in communities that may host more trash in the future, like Dalton and Bethlehem.
Mike Wimsatt, the director of waste management at the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services, told the committee he believes the rules that his agency has already crafted are more protective than what lawmakers have proposed this session.
The state’s current standards require landfills to be positioned in a location that allows their operators to detect and remediate leaks before contamination reaches the property line. State lawmakers and advocates have argued that they want rules on contamination to be stricter.
Wimsatt said the agency was trying to balance two complex issues: protecting environmental health, but leaving enough places in the state where landfills could be located to ensure there is enough capacity to dispose of waste.
The remaining bill that, according to Sen. Pearl, would address the other landfill issues that have long troubled New Hampshire lawmakers, is in the Senate finance committee after an amendment on the Senate floor. Earlier versions of that bill have faced criticism for limiting local control over landfill decisions.
